Live Action contributor Lauren Enriquez wrote an article a week ago about pro-choice author Magda Denes. Denes, who survived Nazi Germany, held on to a pro-choice viewpoint even when confronted with the horrors of abortion while researching her book, In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital. Her book, though written many years ago, reveals some basic truths about abortion. Here are some quotes from the book that illustrate key points.

Abortion takes lives

Denes quotes three different abortion doctors.

One says:

When you do a D & C most of the tissue is removed by the Olden forceps or ring clamp and you actually get gross parts of the fetus out. So you can see a miniature person so to speak, and even now I occasionally feel a little peculiar about it because as a physician I’m trained to conserve life and here I am destroying life.

Another says:

In the beginning I was mixed up because I was taught by the Hippocratic Oath not to take a life.

And a third:

It [abortion] goes against all things which are natural. It’s a termination of a life, however you look at it.

“Babies” are killed

A clinic worker says:

A lot of people say they’re killing their baby. You get a lot of that. Some people afterwards get very upset and say ‘I killed my baby.’ Or even before, they say ‘My circumstances are such that I can’t keep it, but I’m killing my baby.’ They wouldn’t rather have the baby, and give it up for adoption either. If you go into that with them they will say that they could never do that…and yet they still consider it killing the baby…well, they are killing a baby. I mean, they are killing something that would develop into maturity…

Doctors know it’s murder

Denes was interviewed in a newspaper about her book and said:

There wasn’t a doctor, who at one time or another in the questioning did not say, “This is murder.”

So Denes, although she is pro-choice, has documented how abortion providers in one busy abortion clinic all acknowledge that they are in the business of taking lives. Why do they do it? One doctor gives a reason:

It’s not a purely altruistic …. The money that’s involved is also a big factor in why to do this. And I think that most doctors who do abortions also do them for the money’s sake. It’s a big motive, and certainly it’s nothing to be hypocritical about.

Another doctor says:

I practice medicine not to make a living and yet I like to make money at it. We made a lot of money in abortions. … For the first two or three months I didn’t do any of the abortions… Then I suddenly realized I had all the headaches because whenever they ran into trouble I got involved. I took over gradually and work two days a week and I found that I work very hard, but it made an awful lot of money.

And some abortionists think women aren’t deserving of respect

One doctor says:

The patients are subservient to us, and when they rebel it’s very simple: Go to somebody else….What better relationship can a man have with a woman? Besides, if you finger f*ck thirty women a day with your fingers, and in a way you do, this is a form of sexual violation.

Clinic workers sometimes criticize the doctors:

I really feel that about several of the doctors. That there’s really pathological things and their involvement with abortion. Like Dr. Roderigo. [pseudonym] He is very sarcastic and he really, you know, like goes after people. Recently he had a horrendous fight with Rachel [another clinic worker]. It was absolutely, totally disgraceful. It happened right in the nurse’s station. He flew at her. Cursing, screaming out loud, yelling, you could hear it all over the whole floor. It was incredible, I mean, imagine the kind of feeling that gives the patients on the floor. He was just out after her and it had to do with her being a woman, in her position, kind of…”

And reveal a lack of concern about patient care:

Our surgeons have a technique, even though I shouldn’t really say this, where they don’t really scrub between cases. They’ll scrub once and they’ll do a case and they’ll go next door to the next room and put on a new gown and gloves. Without scrubbing between.

Clinic workers silence their consciences

Clinic workers describe how they have hardened themselves to the death of the babies:

I’m not one to see blood and mess and things like that. But I have since gotten so excited about it that I thought about going back to nursing school. When you think about it on a certain level, it’s a really interesting thing that is happening. It’s fascinating, when you can think about it clinically and not get involved in the people, or the babies. What happened when I was first working here was that I just thought about the baby and that was very upsetting. I’m very pro-abortion… several times I saw a really beautiful things happen, I mean it’s physically beautiful… Sometimes you can see the vagina opening up in the entire thing coming at once.

Another says:

[Abortion] hasn’t had any effect on me at all. …. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a male, but when I leave here I don’t feel worried, as if I’ve done something wrong. It’s like any other type of surgery, I just consider it a job. I once did say to myself, “Gee, suppose I’d one day have a dream and see thousands of fetuses running after me.” ….I feel funny sometimes taking on a fetus by D&C even, when you can see the heart beating. Even with D&C’s you get these feelings that you are doing something wrong. Especially when you see arms and legs coming out. It comes out in so many pieces. We had nurses that couldn’t adjust to this type of work. Many of them quit.”

Denes herself becomes hardened to the babies’ deaths.

She watches clinic workers looking through the remains of an aborted child for a lost ring, barely noticing the horror of it.

Sensibility is blunted through exposure. After weeks of trailing Holzman [an abortionist] from OR 1 to OR 2, my sense of meaning dulls. I begin to see “cases,” “cervical apertures,” “fetal tissue.”… One time the circulating nurse loses her wedding ring during surgery. She discovers the loss at the end of the operation as the orderly is about the fold the bloodied sheets on the floor. She takes the filled plastic bag from the wastebasket and empties it into the middle of the sheets. Both kneel and with their bare hands rummage frantically in the pile of placental tissue and blood and body parts. “It has to be here,” she says nearly in tears. “We’ll find it,” he reassures her. I am all for them. Is frightful to lose one’s wedding ring.… Hours later, when the scene reasserts itself in my mind, I do not recognize myself.

And eventually, Denes and the clinic workers just sit around joking about eating aborted babies.

… Several of us sit in the cafeteria around a luncheon table, eating overdone, tasteless stew. “What do you think this is made of?” Someone asks. “Venison,” I say. “Pigeon,” says Betsy. “Don’t be silly,” says one of the counselors “there is a hell of a lot cheaper meat to be found around here.” All of us laugh, guffaw, splutter, and slap each other on the arms. It is the funniest thing we have heard in years… “Get a hold of yourself, ladies,” Rachel says. “This is unseemly.” She is right, of course, but all of us laugh again. “I think it’s a Greek dish,” says Teresa, laughing so hard that tears begin to roll down her face and we can barely understand her. “It’s fetustu.” There is no containing any of us now. “There is mincemeat pie for dessert,” someone shouts. “And that isn’t tomato juice you’re drinking, ” adds somebody else. Most of us are doubled over. The air is filled with the shrieks, and gasps, and gurgles. My sides begin to ache.”

Denes has written a book that shows the horror of abortion. That it comes from a person who is dedicated to the pro-choice belief system is even more disturbing.